A/N: If anyone is still on the site to actually read this I must commend and honestly thank you. It's been almost 3 YEARS since I've updated this story. Honestly I had to brainstorm a bunch to try to even remember where it was going. But here is the second chapter of this fic. I would much appreciate reviews.

A tall, dark-skinned girl waited in the trees. Finding a comfortable postion in a tree was a hard feat, but Anamaria was determined. She had been the only one to carry out the plan while the others had left her high and dry. It was daytime and she had no where else to go but the trees. She was in complete honesty lost and only had the slightest clue as to where she was going. North was about the only thing she could even begin to fathom about the direction she should have been going. Unfortunately for her, she hadn't much of an inner compass to guide her either.

But sitting and tredging through slavery was not an option of hers. She muttered to herself in Spanish. Her 'friends' were cowards. How could they just sit there in their cabins and wait for the morning so they could be ordered around, beaten and raped? Ana could stand it no longer. She was not the type to take orders from a slave owner. She was the one who gave the orders. Only she did not have such luxury under the ownership of such Master Donovan Davies.

She despised that man with a passion. He made her blood boil and her dark skin itch. He made her feel disgustingly unclean and damaged. She called him Master Davies as did all the other slaves on the plantation, only she was the only one of them that could claim blood to him. Her mother has been the product of a rape of a Spanish plantation owner, Nolverto Covas and a fresh African woman, and she the same from Master Davies. As long as she could control it, she refused to let herself continue that cycle.

That was why her freedom was so important to her. Not only the oppression and hate for the establishment of slavery itself but because she hated what she was and where she came from. That was why she could no longer sit there in her cabin and watch as it happened again. She refused to be some rich, white man's concubine and pop out his rape produced offspring or work his fields. That was why she found herself a comfortable spot in the tree, high into the canopy of it, hopefully far enough that no one could see the leg of her britches off the side of a heavy branch. It was time for some much needed sleep. She would have plenty of moving to do tomorrow and the job of finding food from somewhere. But for now, the only thing on her mind were dreams.

"Tomorrow night!" Said Anamaria. "We have to. I can't sit here any longer." She was beginning to get ansy. Ever since the plan emerged from someone's lips she had been excited and anticipating her escape.

"Ana," said a girl about her age, 17, with a bandana tied around her braided hair, started, "We can't. We have to wait until the right time." Ana slammed her hands down own the floor, rocking up onto her knees.

"The right time?" She exclaimed as loud as secrecy would allow her to. "When will be the right time dear Cassandra? Please, OH, please tell me when that will be. What better time than now?"

"I don't know Ana," stated another voice. This time it came from a tall, muscular male by the name of Nathaniel. "Wouldn't it be better to wait? Just a few more nights. Tomorrow just isn't enough time. We have no arrangements. Where will we sleep? What will we eat? How do we get there? What do we do when we become free?"

"I am already free. I'm not a slave! Not to Nolverto Covas, or Donovan Davies or anyone of this world. I'm human just as any Spanish, or Eurpean! I feel. I think. I hunger. I tire. I thirst," she said to the 5 memebers of her circle, who saw by the low candle light in the center. "I thirst Nathaniel! I thirst freedom! And it's so close to my tongue, I can smell the aroma. Nathaniel! Cassandra! Taylor! Thomas! Marie! Can you not taste it? No, we have no arrangements. But I will drink freedom. I will eat and breathe freedom! And whatever freedom says I will obey!"

Taylor, Thomas and Marie hung on to her every word. They believed that as they went on, they would find their way, just as Anamaria did. Nathaniel and Cassandra, however, were not as easily convinced. "We understand your position Anamaria-"

Anamaria was infuriated by now and it took most of her strength to calm herself. "You understand my position? To escape bonds is a position?" She could not believe what cowards they had become. She knew if they continued to push this off it would never happen. If she did not leave with the next night she would be in bondage her whole life.

"Ana...You must understand what we're trying to tell you," Cassandra tried to reason.

"I do. I understand that you all have no courage and that you will spend the rest of your lives taking orders from someone who calls you property. I understand that the three of you," she said pointing to the quietest ones of the bunch,"will listen and hang on to every word of theirs because you lack heart and will and the desire to breathe your own breaths!" She got up quickly and quietly, making her way back to her own cabin feeling disgusted after leaving those whom she thought trulty desired freedom as much as she did.

Anamaria would not suffer a lifetime of bondage. At all costs she would escape from her chains and only take orders from freedom and the wind. She would make it work. Even if she died trying. Even if she did it alone.